Reading · My Adirondack Diary

May 16, 2026 ~ Vol 54

If I have a choice, I prefer to read the transcript of a Trump or Hegseth press conference rather than listening to it live. I welcome the annotation and commentary from the author of the article, but primarily it’s just that I really can’t stand the sound of their voices. I am not sure which one aggravates me more, but probably Trump solely because he is behind the mic more often than Hegseth. If the President doesn’t like the question, or the tone of the question, or the reporter asking the question, he just shoots the messenger. “That was a dumb question!” Trump will retort, or “you are a dumb reporter!”, or something along those lines. And the conversation and the questions just move on from there, as if this is all normal. I prefer to read about it the next day. Every once in a while I am caught unawares and find myself listening to a press gaggle live or to a Pentagon press conference at which Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth is fielding questions from the media. Should anyone have the temerity to actually suggest that the war in Iran is not going quite as well as the administration had planned, or was not really as successful as he had suggested in his prior comment, Hegseth will let burst a tirade of facts and statistics that prove, in the Secretary’s mind, that the conflict in Iran is the most successful conflict in the history of conflicts. X-thousand targets have been bombed. The Iranian regime had been wiped out. The next generation of Iranian leadership had also been wiped out. The Iranian stores of enriched uranium have been “obliterated”. And the Iranian Navy “is at the bottom of the sea.” Woe to the reporter who follows up with a question to clarify the meaning of “obliterated”, as the administration has in the past assured the American public that the aforementioned uranium stockpiles had already been obliterated—so why are we even having this conversation again?

How did we even get here? The US was party to the original Iran Nuclear Agreement, the 2015 JCPOA, which had been signed by Iran and all members of the UN Security Council, including the United States. In 2018, President Trump withdrew from the agreement that the Obama administration had taken years to negotiate, with participation of the UN Security Council members. Trump reinstituted economic sanctions against Iran, which were kept in place by the newly elected Biden Administration after the 2020 election.

On June 13, 2025, Israel conducted a major operation against Iran. The attack targeted nuclear facilities, military sites, and regime infrastructure, following nearly two years of war between Israel and Iran-backed “proxy” militants Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza. Additional Iranian proxy militants included the former Assad regime in Syria, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen, all armed to the teeth with Iranian weaponry.

During this war, Israel sought to counter the existential threat of Iran imminently developing a nuclear weapon, as well as its ramped-up production of ballistic missiles. Israel’s strategic goal was specific— destroying nuclear and missile infrastructure.

As fighting increased, the United States got involved, targeting the most critical and fortified sites in Iran’s nuclear program, which Israel was unable to destroy with its own arsenal. Following the US bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities in June, 2025, President Trump announced that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been completely and totally obliterated utilizing US bunker-busting bombs. A ceasefire was reached—but— the nuclear program was not fully eliminated; the International Atomic Energy Agency later reported that Iran had stored highly enriched uranium in an underground facility undamaged by the bombings. In September, 2025, the UN reimposed sanctions on Iran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent labeled the collapse of the Iranian currency in December 2025 as the strategy’s “grand culmination.” At least he didn't say “obliterated”.

In the aftermath of the 12-Day 2025 war, Iran’s currency entered a free fall, exacerbated by new international sanctions. The economic spiral led to the outbreak of protests in December, 2025, which spread across Iran in January 2026. Security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown, killing at least 30,000 people.

At the outset of the current 2026 conflict, code-named Operation Epic Fury, the Trump administration set out a number of strategic objectives: the elimination of imminent threats from the Iranian regime, to prevent Iran from ever producing a nuclear weapon, to destroy its Navy, and to encourage Iranian citizens to overthrow its government (regime change). This last objective was a drastic strategic pivot — from degrading nuclear infrastructure to executing a “decapitation” strike against the Iranian leadership — and shattered the previous rules of engagement, dragging the region into an open-ended war of attrition with no obvious diplomatic off-ramps. To prevent Iran from ever obtaining nuclear capabilities, Trump promised (once again) to destroy Iran’s nuclear program including their current stocks of enriched uranium and the infrastructure necessary to fully refine weapons grade enriched uranium.

Operation Epic Fury is currently stuck in the mud of a stalemate, with both Iran and the US administration claiming victory. Both the Pentagon and the White House will offer a long list of accomplishments - targets destroyed, Iranian leadership assassinated, and they count these accomplishments as a “mission accomplished”. Both Trump and Hegseth have declared, on numerous occasions, that we have already won. Unfortunately, Iran feels the same way.

In planning for any operation, be it a war or a corporate product launch, there are five components in a strategic plan that must be mapped out before proceeding. First, an analysis of the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses for both you and your adversary. Sometimes called a SWOT analysis, it examines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The second step is preparing a list of strategic goals and the action plans to achieve each goal. Next comes projected outputs—targets that must be destroyed, product components that must be procured or produced. The next, and most important, and the one that the Administration forgot about is “outcomes”, what are the consequences of the outputs? Outputs are static, but outcomes are dynamic; they change in real time. How will your competition or adversary react? How will the output being examined impact the market? How will your adversary / competitor react to your introduction? This is where the administration dropped the ball. Their planning, to the extent that there was any, stopped at outputs and did not consider the outcomes. At his press conferences, Hegseth scrolls down a list of targets destroyed, but does not even mention the ultimate outcome of the actions. You can destroy thousands of buildings, but if the reaction to your output is Iran holding the global energy markets hostage by closing down shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, your output was useless. The outcome is all that is important.

After the 2025 bombing, in a national address Trump spoke of his “spectacular military success”, and went on to assure the nation that the Iranian stockpiles of nuclear material had been “completely and totally obliterated”. There’s that word again. It was not his biggest misstatement that day. Apparently thinking that this would be a Venezuela like overnight success, he warned the Iranians in a post on Truth Social.

“ANY RETALIATION BY IRAN AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT.”
“THANK YOU! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES”

Trump assumed that Iran would….. do nothing?

There are many more outcomes that the Trump administration did not anticipate. Obviously he did not anticipate gasoline prices at $5.00 and inflation approaching 4%, double the Fed’s targeted rate of 2%. He did not anticipate the rise in oil prices lining Moscow’s coffers with the bonanza they are reaping from oil exports. He did not anticipate the burst of manufacturing in green energy products, from electric vehicles to windmills to solar panels. None of that surge in production is benefiting the United States because Trump has done his best to scuttle any projects that utilize clean energy like windmills and solar. EV auto production has been sidelined in the United States while China increases its lead in global production.

From Thursday’s Semaphore:

EV sales are surging worldwide amid soaring gasoline prices, with some analysts forecasting global fossil fuel demand could be permanently lower after the Iran war. EV sales in Europe jumped by 27% year-on-year in April; sales in Italy almost doubled thanks to government incentives. Purchases worldwide have also been lifted by a surge in Chinese exports, and the country’s EV shipments surpassed those of fossil fuel-powered cars for the first time ever last month. Though EV sales have fallen in the US, where gasoline prices are at their highest level in years, the Iran war could nonetheless lead to a considerable destruction of global oil demand, both OPEC and the IEA said.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened next week the constriction in energy supplies will last for months, and probably into next year. Earlier this week, CNBC’s Carl Quinanilla posted the following quote from Saudi Aramco’s CEO:

‪Carl Quintanilla‬
‪@carlquintanilla.bsky.social‬· 9h
* SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: ENERGY SUPPLY SHOCK THAT BEGAN IN Q1 IS THE LARGEST THE WORLD HAS EVER EXPERIENCED
* SAUDI ARAMCO CEO NASSER: IF HORMUZ DISRUPTION CONTINUES FOR A FEW MORE WEEKS, NORMALIZATION WON’T HAPPEN UNTIL INTO 2027
@reuters.com

The largest impact from this disruption in the oil markets is not in the United States because we are net exporters of oil. We may be paying through the nose for gas, but at least we do not have lines at the pumps. We have ample supply. That is not the case in Europe and especially in Asia, where fuel shortages are causing factory closings and shortened work weeks. Alternative energy sources are there for the asking, and are increasing their market share, but thanks to Trump we are no longer the country offering the solutions. That would be China, which has done absolutely nothing to help resolve Trump’s debacle in the middle east. Never interrupt your adversary when they are making a mistake. The outcomes of our mistakes in Iran will far exceed anything that this administration foresaw, and will impact our international relations for years to come. We are the biggest loser—and China will be the biggest beneficiary. They can thank President Trump for this opportunity.

Outputs v. Outcomes

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